Skyrim: A Malefic Gambit
by Sir Rawk
Summary: When two new recruits slip away from the Imperial army for the day, in the hopes to find some adventure or at least something different from all that marching, they discover that adventure - and its plunder - is not quite what it seems. And what begins as an innocent frolic into the unknown, will change the two boys lives forever... Rated 2 parts T, and 1 part M, so M it is!
1. Chapter 1

**I've made this rating M as I'm not quite certain how far I can go for young teens with my stories. I'd rather leave that up to their parents or themselves to decide. There's always violence and some gore, a smattering of naughtiness, and well, for the most part I hope it's a jolly good read.**

***NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Oblivion, Skyrim, Nirn! and all its characters, places, and events are property of Bethesda Softworks.**

****ANOTHER NOTE: And because I like to write a story with my own swinging space and elbowroom, this will be loosely related to game events, less about the main quest and characters, and more about the little people who adventure behind the scenes. Just a couple of ordinary guys in a wonderfully magical world – thanks Bethesda!**

**~ 1 ~**

**_"…it's an old Dwemer ruin, just up in the foothills…"_**

The horns of the Dawn Call sounded and the army awoke.

Aram sat up next to the smouldering ashes of a cook fire, a cast iron pot lay tipped on its side amongst the bones of last night's meal. The fur fell from his broad shoulders as he glanced up at the cold cerulean firmament where two stars looked down on him like eyes in the silvering light. They reminded him of someone but he did not tarry with the memory. The horns sounded across the valley and all around him men were stirring, yawning and farting, donning their clothes, boots and armour; a human tide of red vestments and red cloaks, stark and crimson against the white field of snow. They packed their travelling oddments, weapons; striking tents and lean to's, and throwing saddlebags on their pack mules and oxen. The horses were on the other side of the camp with the Highborn. Already he could hear the music playing over there: harps, and drums, and flutes, as the highborn Imperial lordlings had their squires and servants don their gleaming plate mail armour and pretty cloaks.

"They had some sweet little visitors over there last night," Mik Stave said. He was crouching down beside the cook fire trying to warm his long narrow hands against the dying coals. He was the only friend Aram had in the entire world, and the only boy who had marched with him from their small village of Hammerglen in the foothills above Lake Illinalta during the Imperial call-to-arms. "Two healthy looking brunettes and this dazzling little red head. My word, Aram, if you had seen the legs on it you may have well swallowed your soup spoon, she was extraordinary!"

Aram smiled as he pulled on his iron-shod boots. "You should've stolen her from them."

Mik nodded. "I should've, indeed. I love my redheads. But I'd be afraid the rest of the girls would have followed. You know how comely I am. The ladies wouldn't stand a chance. Then what would the Highbrows have to play with throughout the cold night, other than their swords and their soft little hands?"

"Then they'd be like us," Aram said laughing. The skin prickled across his chest in the icy morning air as he stood and gathered his undershirt and hardened leather jerkin. Neither of them wore the vestments or armour of the Imperials of Cyrodiil. That honour would come later, once they had shown their prowess in battle. But between them they had begged, borrowed and stole a small clutch of military oddments along the way to see them through.

Mik stood up next to him, the top of his head barely reaching Aram's shoulder. "They have me to thank for that, Aram, the lucky bastards. Don't they think us footmen have a right to women also?" Though Aram loved his friend, Mik had the face of a rat – one that had been beaten and drowned, before having its fur removed. Though his tongue may be sharp and cheeky and would often make women blush, or laugh, or more likely hurl abuse at him, his features were far from comely. Underneath a hurl of black hair were squinting black little eyes full of mischief, and a mouth wide enough to suit his wicked tongue, with lips that reminded Aram of the trout he used to catch in the streams back home.

Aram shrugged. "They think we're fine with the goats and mules."

Mik nodded. "That red head, Aram. She was the stuff of a man's dreams."

Aram slapped his friend across his scrawny back. "Every girl who breathes is the stuff of your dreams, Mikealus." Mik gave him a filthy look.

"Not every girl, Aram." Mik glanced across the camp at a grinning witch of a woman who had been offering her services around to any of the foot soldiers willing to pay for her not so secretive ministrations. She was bent and bony and could have won the lead role in a Hagraven Play, and forced a shiver from the smaller boy. "Not that one, I assure you, _Mara_ protect my privates!" His hand flashed, faster than a flickering flame, and suddenly a gold septim appeared where once there had been only air. "These are the only tricks this coin will be seeing today, and nothing from that hideous thing calling herself a Lady of Negotiable Affection and taking our good men's money." Mik shivered again. "I can barely discern her from the oxen!"

Aram gathered up his pack and hefted a huge forester's axe he had brought with him from Hammerglen. "Then you have plenty to choose from, my friend."

Mik shook his head. "I don't know why I bother to call you friend, Aram. For a hillhead you have a cruel outlook."

Aram frowned. "I'm no hillhead."

Mik grinned. "How do you know? You're an orphan just like me! You don't know where you come from. You wouldn't know if you're a Redguard, Breton or half Orc! Maybe a three-quarter Orc judging by the size of you, and that jaw! Who's to say you're not the heir apparent of a horde of dimwitted hillheads. Your mother was probably a giant and your father was a lonely old troll. Why else would you choose a monstrosity like that as a weapon?"

Aram hefted the axe with finesse. "I'm good with an axe."

Mik shrugged and patted the dagger on his hip, then lifted the rusting iron sword he had laying on the ground. "You're good at cutting down a tree, or cutting up wood. But there are no better weapons then a sword and dagger, my friend. And a dagger by night is more powerful than a hundred axes by day."

Aram shook his head. "That's deep, Mik. Very deep. You have the words of a professional. The _words_."

"You don't know my past, Aram. I've seen and done things you could only dr-"

"I've known you since you were _five_!"

The horns sounded again and the Legate of the Imperial Army began to bellow aloud the order to march. After him came the howl of his Lieutenants, swiftly followed by the angry shouts of the Field Sergeants.

The Field Sergeant of Aram and Mik's company of new recruits, Sir Akel the Spitter they called him, roared across the camp as the boys gathered their things together. It happened every morning, and would continue to happen every morning until their demise or the end of their service as soldiers beneath him.

Akel screamed. And when he screamed he spat. Huge tendrils of the stuff flying out from his red face in long streamers, as his eyes bulged and he cursed every living thing in front of him.

"Why aren't we up and marching, you useless mud puppies?" he screamed at them. He was a small angry little man with a bountiful quiver of quotes and nicknames for his troops, and a voice that belonged to a collapsing mountain, or as Mik liked to put it 'a man who possessed the appeasing tones of a dragon's fart'. He projected it at anyone he was looking at, even though he might mean the whole company or simply some poor fool behind him. It did not matter to Akel the Spitter. "_You_ two!"

Aram and Mik stood bolt upright and addressed their weapons as they had been instructed throughout the march since their first training day in Riverwood. The Field Sergeant rounded on them pointing, and snarling, and spitting. "Look at you two skeever turds! You think the Legate will wait on you like some endearing uncle? I can't believe we picked you up from that stinking little fish grotto you call a village to join our glorious army against the Storm Cloaks! Look at you. Barely two weeks marching and still holding your weapons like old women. _No_, I've met old women, _ancient_ women, who can handle a blade better, march better, and generally do anything better than you two – and with bigger balls than the two of you put _together_!"

"Then why didn't you enlist them into the company?" Mik muttered across to his friend.

"_What_ was that, little ant?" Akel screeched. He was looking up at Mik as he said this.

"Nothing sir!" Mik shouted in reply.

"Don't go calling me a sir, you little snowberry maiden! Get _marching_! North, you dolts! We're headed _North_!" He moved on, screaming and spitting at other soldiers in the newly formed company. They were on the move.

The army would march for four hours before it would stop to rest for an hour or so to eat and hydrate. Then another four hours before it finally drew up camp again; following the road north along the Velothi mountains across Eastmarch until they reached Dunmeth Pass.

It was a huge living thing. An entity of gleaming armour, spears, pikes and shields; a thunder of boots and hooves trailing a lengthy gouge of mud and slush across the white expanse of Skyrim. One of the merchants back in Riverwood, commenting on the mobile army's magical prowess at turning snow into slush, had asked the Legate to march his men along the trade roads west, so that they might clear the route for his caravans. Then he had laughed uproariously and pointed at the passing army, remarking that they were just one gigantic human snowplough.

It was the 2nd of Sun's Dawn and bitterly cold; Mad Pelagius Day if you were a Breton, and a holiday, though no one in the Imperial army seemed to be celebrating anything other than keeping their feet moving and their backs straight.

The Imperials had gathered recruits like Aram and Mik on their way across the province, from Riverwood to Whiterun and all along the White River into Eastmarch and were currently at fifteen thousand strong; one thousand of which made up the highborn Imperials mounted atop their steeds in shining plate mail and brandishing their rippling red banners at the head of the column. At the rear came the lumbering oxen hauling wagons of supplies behind them. Aram and Mik were marching just ahead of the lead oxen drivers, which meant they spent eight hours of every day looking at the backs of men and struggling not to slip over in the well trodden quagmire of icy slop that was constantly forming ahead of them. At least it was not as bad as those tagging along behind the supply train. They had to deal with more than just mud!

"Do you think they'd miss us if we nicked off for a bit?" Mik asked his friend as they made their way along in the cacophony of marching boots and hooves and grunting bovine.

Aram puzzled at the question. "No, I'm sure they'd treat us much nicer than the last three boys that tried to run for it. Remember them? The ones they strung up under the elm tree outside Shor's Stone."

Mik flinched at the thought. "Yeah, but that was for desertion. I'm not talking about running away. I'm talking about ducking off for a short while, maybe just half a day or so, and catching up with the column further down the road."

"And where is it you think we might be going out here? There's so many sights to see, Mik. Snow, wild bears, sabre cats, _giants_!"

Mik shrugged. He was looking lazily at the backs of the soldiers ahead of them, biting at his cheek, which usually meant he had something solid planned, and had been thinking about it for a good long while. "There's also a Dwemer ruin."

Aram almost fell over. "That's funny that is, Mik. For a moment there I thought you just said 'Dwemer ruin'?"

"I did."

"You're a real bard, you know that? Making up funny stories like that. You even sound serious."

Mik punched him in the shoulder as hard as he could. Aram barely felt it. "I _am_ serious, Aram! _Seriously_ serious. Lumpkin was telling me about it the other day."

"Lumpkin's been a thief and a liar since the day he was born!"

Mik kept on. "He says it's an old Dwemer ruin, just up in the foothills a little ahead of us, that he heard about from some wanderer all the way from Black Falls. Its meant to be huge!"

"So he heard about it from someone else from the other side of the province, and you heard about it from him. What a solid and goodly source of information you've gathered there, Mikaelus."

"Stop calling me that or I'll knife you."

Aram laughed. "You may as well, you lunatic. You must be a Breton? Because it's Mad Pelagius Day and I think it's getting to you. Go on then. Save me all the marching I'll have to do before I get ripped apart by some roaming frost troll, or die from some ancient spell the Dwemer left in that ruin long ago for that one time in the future when a couple of lads as dumb as us come wandering into their home! Are you coming down with something, Mik? You got the rockjoint, a touch of addlebrain?"

"Lumpkin says he's already been there, and that he went in through a big golden door. It was _open_!"

"And you believe, Lumpkin? Born liar and thief. The same guy who stole your boots and let you walk bare foot for three hours before you could steal them back again?"

"I believe him when he gets a certain look in his eye. It's when he knows he's onto something, Aram. I know it! He gets it during dice games when he's loaded the dice. Or when he's taken the septims from your pocket and offered to be the first shout at the tavern. He gets the Thieves Glee! And I'm telling you, Lumpkin's found something really, really big here. This could change our lives, friend! Hell, it'd at least be a break from all this 'march hither, and march thither, and sleep yonder, and wake up you ugly skeever turds!"

Aram did stop then, and he grabbed Mik by the sleeve of his leather jerkin and pulled him around so they were face to face. A large bullock clomped by, snuffling loudly as it drew its cart of gourds, cabbages and potatoes behind it, eyeing the two boys with its big brown doe eyes.

Aram kept his voice low enough so they would not be heard over the rattle of the cart going by. "And you want to put our lives at risk, possibly never giving us the chance to come back to the army – which we joined together so we could eat properly and have a life outside of Hammerglen – and maybe even getting warrants put out for our arrest, if not our heads?"

Mik nodded.

Aram glared at his friend with something that was close to fury. But staring too long at Mik had a spell of its own kind. It was in the way Mik's little black eyes lit up and implored him like an injured mouse. It was in the way his big troutish smile became infectious, and the following mad giggle, so annoying at times, tended to take affect in your own chest, until it was impossible not to laugh aloud and blink tears form your eyes.

Aram shook his head. But with all the laughing they had just done, and with the supply wagons and oxen trundling and grunting around them in a symphony of squelching mud, he could not believe his friend had somehow enlisted him into going. The laughing had done it. The decision was made.

"How long is this 'excursion' going to take?" Aram asked.

Mik hissed out a sharp giggle and dragged the bigger boy between the wagons and across to the side of the road. There they stood beneath the hanging canopy of an Elves Ear, watching the supply train trundling slowly by. Further up the line, Field Sergeant Akel was screaming abuse at their company, marching at the front of their section. Aram and Mik knew from two weeks of experience that Akel was a terrible counter of heads, and had an even worse memory for names – that was probably why he called everyone 'skeever turd' or 'mud puppy'. It had been from their company that the deserters had fled, but it had been the deserters own foolish mistake to stop by an inn along the northern road where they got themselves blind drunk and were found by the lead Imperial scouts the following morning.

Mik could barely keep still he was so excited. "We can get there in under an hour Lumpkin says, so long as we leg it. He'll already be on his way. He said he'll wait for us to follow before he goes in."

"I'm sure he will. So, will we get back before nightfall?"

Mik nodded. "We get back even before the column makes camp. The Spitter won't be any the wiser."

"He better not be."

Mik shrugged "Anyway, the Imperials are boring. Why are we fighting their war anyway? I've never even seen a Storm Cloak. Why should I go and kill one?"

Aram began to explain the atypical Imperial propaganda that ran rampant around small towns like Hammerglen: of 'the evil men who bedded with dragons' and 'the extremist Daedra worshipping Nords who wanted to pull the world down into the eternal darkness of Oblivion', everything all small townfolk got fed by journeymen in red vestments during the uprising of the Storm Cloaks. But before he had got to the part of Ulfric being possessed by one of the foulest Daedra in all of Nirn, he realised Mik had vanished.

Looking around Aram could see his friend bolting up into the hills, flitting between the snow-laden trees like a shadow.

"Bugger it," Aram muttered. Frost trolls and giants be damned, there was a Dwemer ruin to explore!

With one last look to make sure none of the column were watching, he shouldered his forester's axe and followed hastily after his friend. They had better get back before camp was made, or they were dead men!


	2. Chapter 2

**~ 2 ~**

**_"…You make friends with the enemy?..."_**

Up in the jagged foothills of Eastmarch a thick quilt of soft snow had settled across the land, making the steep climb along the winding trails and through the tall pines even more taxing for the young warrior. The Velothi mountains, though not half as ominous as the Throat of the World may have been, were impressive enough in their own right, looming up above the trees like ancient gods; their mighty visages hewn by eons of elemental artistry.

The Imperial army was far behind when Aram realised he had completely lost his friend in the wilderness. Mik was somewhere up ahead he was sure of it, but when he stopped his progress up into the foothills, his iron-shod boots sinking deep into the snowy drifts up to the knee, Aram could not hear anything; other than the soughing of the icy morning breeze and the occasional tinkling of snow flakes coming down from the pine trees, glimmering like stardust in the early morning sunlight.

"Mikaelus!" Aram called out. Just loud enough that he was certain his friend would hear him, but hopefully nothing else. Whatever that might be.

They should not have got separated. But Mik was always racing head first into things; and Aram was getting tired of having to always be the one to pull his friend out of trouble. Or follow him too late into trouble.

It was dangerous to be this far away from the column. There was an immeasurable amount of comfort to be had when you were surrounded by fifteen thousand armed men. But out here, on your own, the pale world seemed so much colder and the dark trees much more menacing.

He had heard all manner of stories of creatures that lived this far north and east of Skyrim. Skyrim had always been a dangerous place, but it seemed more so the colder it got. He was used to dealing with bears and wolves, they were bad enough, but up here, the Divines knew what monstrosities could be tromping around waiting to tear out the throat of the next unwary traveller. Mik was not answering him.

Aram took one step forward when a sharp thin blur buzzed past his face. There was a loud _ffffschwoook!_ and the tree next to him had suddenly sprouted a quivering arrow.

"By the Horned Helm!" Aram roared, taking a step back, but the thick drifts of snow held fast to his ankle and he toppled backward onto his ass.

As quickly as he could manage the young warrior scurried back to his feet and struggled to bring his foresters axe to bear.

"That's not going to do you much good, Imperial." A voice called from the trees.

Aram scanned the white expanse and found it impossible to locate the bowman. His eyes were wide with fear as he searched every gap and behind every dark trunk of pine or Elves Ear to find the foe. Finally, he located his assailant squatting precariously in the boughs of a bent Eastmarch pine just ahead of him up the hill.

The figure was garbed in dark hide armour that was edged with the white and black pelt of a snow sabre cat. There was no helmet on the bowman's head but a simple woollen cowl covered most of it.

From this distance Aram could see cool but surprisingly pretty blue eyes glaring out form that cowl and a whisp of blonde Nordish hair. Then he realized - it was not a man at all up in that tree, but a _woman_! Across her shoulder was a trail of dark blue cloth tucked down through her sword belt, and Aram's heart froze. She was a Storm Cloak!

Aram crouched a little lower ready to spring away once the next arrow was launched. He had very low expectations for his success with such acrobatics. That was more Mik's line of work. Mik could out dart a dartwing if he had to, but Aram was was built more for strength than speed. Not that he was without agility; he had bested most of the new recruits back in Riverwood at swordplay. But no one trained against a notched arrow in your face where the bowman was perched no more than twenty-five feet away and capable of spitting you from any angle you saw fit to go. Well, no one he knew.

"I wouldn't be thinking of doing anything rash there, Imperial." The Storm Cloak woman said evenly. "If I had wanted you dead that arrow would have found your neck instead of that old pine." Her voice was deep and cool and full of savage confidence. She unnerved him thoroughly, even though those twinkling eyes were as deep and clear a blue as the winter firmament above her.

"What do you want?" Aram croaked. His mouth was dry. He had never been in this kind of danger before. He had never killed a man or woman, nor been close to one trying to kill him. Fist fights, sure, he'd had plenty of them in his seventeen years, but nothing dire. He had escaped an attack by wolves when he was a child, and he had helped scare off a few bears with the other men from Hammerglen when the beasts came too close to their houses, but never anything like this. His heart was hammering and his senses were literally exploding with panic.

I have to calm myself, he thought. I cannot be afraid. I am not afraid. I will live through this. She is only a woman.

The Storm Cloak marginally let some slack come into the extension she had on the bow, but only marginally. "You've not seen a woman soldier before have you, Imperial?"

"Stop calling me that," Aram said. "I am not an Imperial."

"You aren't?" her eyebrow raised and a smile flashed across her face, revealing clean white teeth. "What are you doing out here, so far from your column then? _Man_ who marches with Imperials though claims not to be one of them."

Aram licked his lips. "We were just wandering." _Divines_!

"We?" the Storm Cloak woman had caught him out. "There's more of you out here? I wasn't expecting more than one."

Aram did not know what to say to that, so he kept his mouth shut. Come on, Mik, where are you? There was no moving anywhere for him. Why had he chosen to trudge this far out in the open along one of the main trails? Because it was hard going, he reminded himself. He knew it was dangerous out here, but he had not been expecting an enemy soldier.

"Put up your bow, Lourilain!" Another voice called from across the trail.

Both the Storm Cloak woman and Aram glanced across to see two men walking idly toward them, as if conversations in these parts of the world with armed women in trees was but a common ritual. One of them was Mik, and Aram felt an immediate sense of relief. But the other was a man dressed in Imperial armour, with sword and greaves but no helmet. The man had black hair and a small black moustache cutting across the top of the sharp line of his mouth. Then Aram realised who it was. This was Corporal Lumpkin, one of the newer recruits who had managed to win the Imperial outfit and weapon, not to mention the ranking of Corporal, off one of the Cyrodiil soldiers during a dice game. No one had been able to prove wether Lumpkin had loaded the dice or not, but Mik claimed the Corporal always carried a loaded pair and a normal pair; just like he did with cards – there was always an extra pair of Daedra Hearts from a hidden pack up his sleeve. It was Lumpkin who had called out to the Storm Cloak woman with such casual disregard.

The moustached Corporal laughed heartily. "Put it up, for Mara's sake girl, before you get this fool killed."

Aram glared across at Lumpkin. "Who are you calling fool?"

Lumpkin smiled. The slit of his mouth grew ominously long across his face like a dagger gash. "I'm calling you a fool, Aram. Traipsing along the middle of a path like some bumbling village boy. And that's no way to speak to your corporal is it?"

Mik pushed Lumpkin and almost sent him face first into the snow. "You're no corporal, and you know it."

"I take offense to that!" Lumpkin gathered himself and looked up at the Storm Cloak woman.

"Who are these boys?" Lourilain asked from her perch, unnotching the arrow from her bow and sliding it back into the quiver over her shoulder. "I almost killed this one. I thought it was just going to be you and I up here?"

Lumpkin shrugged. "They can be trusted. The one with me is a wizard with a lock. That one over there, well, as you can see he'll make a fine 'proponent' if we need him. And anyway, we need more hands for a place like that. It may very well be abandoned but I'm sure it's not without its… hazards."

Aram relaxed his grip on the axe and swung it as casually as he could manage over his shoulder. He watched warily as the Storm Cloak woman leapt easily from the tree and hit the snow rolling until she was swiftly back onto her feet. It was quite an impressive piece of movement. And that was not counting the way she walked across to the two men as she turned her back to him.

Even though she was armed and armoured, Aram could not help but notice the sway of her hips, and the particular tightness of her breeches across the muscles of her buttocks, and her long legs. It surprised him at how quickly his feelings about her changed – now she wasn't about to send an arrow through his neck. It made him particularly uncomfortable in a different sort of way, and he found his own breeches a little too tight all of a sudden. And judging by the way Mik was sizing her up it was obvious the smaller boy was thinking the same thing.

"You make friends with the _enemy_?" Mik asked the corporal. "We could get strung up for that."

Lumpkin shrugged. "She was the one who told me about the Dwemer ruin back in Shor's Stone. Said she needed some help, that she'd come all this way from Black Falls, so I thought, why not? A bit of gold between strangers is sure to make us fast friends, wouldn't you say? And she's not half bad to look at."

"And I am no Storm Cloak," Lourilain told them. "You might be safe posing as Imperials on this side of the world with your fifteen thousand strong army beside you, but most people in these parts are on the side of the Storm Cloaks. These clothes will get me better prices and a sure room at an inn where yours will only get you haunted looks and deadly whispers, and, I dare say, your throats slit."

Aram walked up to the group still trying to come to terms with his close encounter with an imminent demise. As he stopped beside the woman he noticed there was something very powerful and untethered about her. Those eyes, which he tried not to stare at for too long, were startlingly beautiful. She seemed much too pretty to be out here in the wilds of Eastmarch. Though with the curved bow in her hand she looked like she could handle herself very well. Then he had trouble keeping his eyes from the swell beneath her leather breastplate.

"So if you're not a Storm Cloak then, what are you?" he asked, attempting to distract himself from her sudden allure.

"Who cares who I am? The fact is I'm here, and so are you, so let's get this done." When she looked at him she made him feel like a five-year-old. Nobody had been able to do that to him, not from just a look. It was all he could do to keep his eyes levelled calmly at hers. He could recall how sharp they were when they had resided behind the drawn bow, and how simple it would have been for her to kill him.

"The woman is sharper than a blade," Lumpkin announced. "We all have little time on this escapade of ours, so let's get ourselves moving."

"Is it far from here?" Aram asked.

"Twenty minutes," Lourilain told him. "A short run - if you can manage the pace." And with that she set off, loping gracefully up between the trees and off the path through the snow.

Aram and Mik exchanged a wondering look.

"Isn't she spectacular?" Lumpkin said to them, and sighed longingly, his dark eyes twinkling. "I think I'm more excited about this prize because she's involved in it than I am about the prospect of treasures beyond our wildest dreams."

"You had better be joking, Lumpkin." Mik said. "We're not putting our necks out for you over a pretty girl are we?"

Lumpkin sighed. "Of course not, Mikaelus. Gold has always been more deserving of my hands than any woman could be. What do you take me for?"

"A thief and a liar." Aramic said.

Lumpkin scowled. "Did I ever tell you I dislike your taste in friends?"

"Shut up," Mik said. "Let's get going before we lose her."


	3. Chapter 3

**~ 3 ~**

**_"…this is our little secret…"_**

"By the horns of Ysgramor," Mik gasped. "Will you look at that!"

The small party had halted in their tracks.

The Dwemer ruin was a stunning sight to behold. Set into a vast rocky canyon at the foot of the Velothi Mountains the sheer size of the grandly engineered magnificence of the Dwemer citadel was overwhelming.

The snow had vanished from the area. Huge golden metallic chimneys broke out from the hard granite surrounds and expelled hot plumes of steam into the air. Indeed, this close to the ancient site the temperature was almost agreeable compared to what they had endured further down the trail. Although it was Sun's Dawn, the coldest month of the year, it felt more like the early days of a cooling Mid Year. At least it had made the last part of the gruelling ascent a little less treacherous, though none of the young men had been able to catch up with their fleet footed guide.

Monstrous steps hewn into the rock traversed down to the floor of the canyon to the base of the ridge, where great domed tomb-like entrances stood guardian across the breadth of the mountain, each with grand golden doors that belonged to a race that should have been bigger than even the ponderous, mammoth-herding giants. Flagstones as wide as a house were set into the neatly levelled ground, though sometime over the last few thousand years Nirn had buckled and heaved pushing the flagstones up into broken peaks here and there, turning grand majesty into ruin. Great Dwemer stiles had toppled alongside the golden doorways, but even these broken pieces were immaculately carved and inlaid, flecked with fissures of gleaming metal that looked like burning gold in the sunlight.

The ancient Dwemer engineers had managed through unimaginable feats to build their city into the landscape in such a way that from afar it looked as organic and indivisible as the rest of the countryside. Yet here, only seeing it almost as they stepped out onto the first of its flagstoned pathways, the ruin was like a warped dream, surfacing out of the rock and soil as if it were some vast intelligence only just awakening from a long slumber.

It was well known that the People of the Deep had vanished at the peak of their civilization, leaving behind the endless wonders of their lost culture scattered across Nirn. Places such as this ruin, were but the derelict creations of a race vanished long ago in one fell swoop, from everything into nothing; and all the more mysterious and awe-inspiring for it.

It left Aram and Mik, and even Corporal Lumpkin in a ruminating silence.

Beside them Lourilain cleared her throat, quite indelicately. "Are you boys just going to stand there gawping like a perplexed flock of goats, or are we going to get ourselves rich?"

"This doesn't amaze you?" Aram asked her, still unable to take his eyes from the grandeur within the rocky canyon.

Lourilain sighed. "What amazes me is what lies inside. Other than that, it is just a crumbling old ruin. And I don't have you gentlemen for too long, so let's get moving."

Mik turned to her. "How can you be so dismissive of this place? I'm not sure I even want to go down there. It's still…" he looked at the steaming chimneys above and below them. "It's still alive!"

"It is just Dwemer magic," Lourilain said. "It is endless, and it is harmless - out here at least. Wait till you see what's _inside_."

Mik licked his lips and turned to the Corporal. "Don't you think this might be a little too dangerous for us, Lumpkin?"

Corporal Lumpkin shrugged, his slit of a mouth curving into a half grin. "I'm sure it has it's hazards, Mikaelus. But I'm also sure that we four can handle them. Especially when you consider what might be in there."

"See," Mik interrupted. "That's the part I don't like about all this. 'Might' has been used, and when I hear the word 'might' being used, especially when it comes to what 'might' or 'might not' be going into my pocket, I get a little anxious."

Aram agreed. "That's right. We don't know what we're going to come up against in there."

Lumpkin nodded sagely, his crisp black moustache twitching to one side. "That's right, gentlemen. We do not. But Lourilain here does. Tell them what you told me, clever girl."

The boys looked to their guide.

Lourilain looked increasingly bored by the conversation. She let out another long sigh and sniffed. "I know a lot about these sites, because I spent my life studying and exploring them. You could say I was trained for it. The most difficult part is getting into these ruins. The doors are impenetrable, made with Dwemer metal and protected by Dwemer magic. They can only be accessed with a key, and most of those vanished with the race long ago. But here and there, thanks to time and the internal movements of the world, some of those doors have been broken, and you can get inside. Usually these points have been explored by people long before us, but the traps took them, or they got too frightened to go any further."

"Traps?" Aram asked.

Lourilain glanced at Lumpkin. "You didn't tell them?"

The Corporal shrugged. "I thought I'd leave it until we were inside."

Lourilain shook her head. "There are traps. Many of them inside the ruins, always at an entrance. Some of them are broken, some of them have already been set off by others before us, but some are still operational. And there are guardians within also that may give us some grief, but I have plans for such obstacles. Corporal Lumpkin has already taken a sneak peek inside the one door that lies open down there."

"Yes," Lumpkin piped up. "I went in and it was very dark and there were a few bodies lying around. Well, bones more than bodies, I should say. Very old and musty."

"And if the Dwemer lights are out, then their magic is broken, which is a good sign," Lourilain told them. "It will mean that their traps and guardians will not be functioning either."

Lumpkin continued. "But even just there, inside the doorway, I found a small sum of treasure I can now show you, now that we're away from the army. But this is our little secret gentlemen, and is to be kept that way until the end of our lives, agreed?"

Aram and Mik nodded. Though Aram felt he had suddenly stepped into something a whole lot darker and more dangerous than he had bargained for. But if Mik was going, he was going. And this pretty eyed guide of theirs seemed very confident indeed.

Lumpkin opened up one of the satchels he carried over his shoulder and produced a small perfect blue stone.

Mik gasped, and Aram felt wonder as the blue stone twinkled in the sunlight. It was very, very pretty.

"That, my good friends, is a flawless sapphire. It is one of three I found on the bodies just inside the open door. But this is nothing. From what Lourilain has told me from her previous expeditions to places like this, we are in store for treasures that are fit for the gods themselves!"

Lourilain laughed. "Only men need treasure, Corporal. The gods, I would hope, are beyond such depravity."

Lumpkin looked hurt. "But you are a treasure seeker yourself. You told me so. Your father brought you up that way. You would call your life's work depravity?"

The guide adjusted the intricately curved long bow across her back. "I search for something I don't even know exists. And treasure killed my father, I know it. But I am human, and require wealth just like the next woman. Come. We must go now, or forfeit more of our precious time while you lot babble on like chickens."

Lourilain loped down the broad brobdignagian stairway winding down to the canyon floor. The long legged guide literally had to jump from one to the next in order to make the descent.

Mik grabbed Lumpkin's sleeve before he could leave. "Do you trust her?" he whispered.

The Corporal turned and flashed his knife like smile. "Mik, I don't trust either of you two, let alone that woman. But as I said, she's pleasing to look at, and she's in it for the same reasons we are. To get _rich_. So let's hurry thus and get going."

The three young men followed after their guide, taking each step with a pause and a leap. Mik and Lumpkin loosened their blades and Aram took a firmer grip on the handle of the big forester's axe. The entrance to the ruin awaited...


	4. Chapter 4

**~ 4 ~**

**_"…What a brave man you are…"_**

Corporal Elmard Lumpkin had never liked anyone. All mortals as far as he was concerned, and this included all humans, elves and orcs, were a most disagreeable bunch. As for the gods and other deities, well, he had not met any, and so the jury was still out on that one. But overall he hated almost anything that breathed. And this included the three people he was about to venture with into the Dwemer ruins.

No living creature had done him any good, as far as he recalled, not a one. His father had beat him daily, and when his father was too drunk to beat him one of his twelve brothers would step in to try his knuckles or knees out on the young Lumpkin; even his mother could not look at him without a wallop across the back of the head. But then, he supposed she had done him a service when she sold him to a band of cutthroats to pay off a gambling debt owed by his father. Elmard had never seen his family again.

He grew up amongst a group of sour, cold faced men who all thought the man next to you was going to be the one to put a knife in your back, so naturally they would end up cutting each others throats before they got around to cutting the throats of the unwary travellers they were supposed to prey on. Then the leader of those cutthroats had ended up, not surprisingly, trying to cut Lumpkin's throat once he came of age at fifteen. Something about looking too smart for a bandit. Fortunately Lumpkin had cut the old vagabond's throat first, and stole into the night with much of their gold. And so, Elmard Lumpkin learnt quickly that people only wanted two things from you: either they wanted to use you, or they wanted to kill you – and little in between.

So Lumpkin discovered two golden rules that became his philosophy when it came to people. Rule Number One: Steal from them wherever and whenever you can. And, if that does not prove to be fruitful enough, Rule Number Two: use said people as tools to steal from someone or something else for larger profit. If that included killing them before or afterward, then better off them than he!

But one thing above all Lumpkin realised he had at his disposal, more than most, was his ability to manipulate people into doing things he wanted. Which went along quite swimmingly with Rule Number Two, and his current undertaking.

Over cups of fine Honningbrew Mead he managed to get the lovely, long-legged Lourilain to tell him all about the Dwemer ruins, and to finally entrust his aid. She did not need to know that he was no real military Corporal; or that he had only joined the legion a week before Aram and Mik were enlisted, and was still not even on the Imperial Enlistment Titles. He had only begun to march with the army because it was a lot warmer than hiding in the countryside from all those people he had stolen from over the five years since leaving the band of cutthroats. It was a lot of fun to fool a fool, especially one that was as pretty and lonely and desperate for the help of armed men as Lourilain was. It meant he might have further use of her down the track, once he got that bow out of her hands. She was rather crafty with it, which unnerved him. But those legs, and that fine firm _rump_! If only he could get her to take off all that unnecessary burdensome armour. What a delicious prize she would make atop all the treasures they were about to find together. The thought made him very, very excited.

After that, all that had been needed was to organize some handy backup, because Lumpkin was much better at talking than he was at fighting, or being a sneak-thief. So he had caught the ear of the cunning but foolish Mik and embroiled him into his plans, who in turn had enlisted his big, dopey friend Aram to come along with them.

It was the perfect set up: the girl who knew about the ruins and the treasures within; the crafty thief who could prize a lock or two, and had an eye for detail; and the beefy meat head who could take all the punishment that might come at them. Lumpkin thought he had done very well by his golden philosophy. He could use them to get what he wanted, then take everything from them that they brought out from the ruins, so he might make a life for himself somewhere down south in the warmer climes of Cyrodiil under a new name and title, and live off all their wealth.

"Is this it?"

Lumpkin blinked. Broken from his reverie by the simpering tones of their guide. He was staring at a tremendous door tempered from golden Dwemer metal, with intricate bass reliefs of rectangles, squares and triangles; such simple designs, he thought, for such an advanced culture. No wonder they had died out. It looked enormous beyond compare. Who made doors that big? It was just inconvenient, surely – even for a giant! He looked across to Lourilain and frowned.

"Of course this is it. What do you take me for?"

Lourilain levelled an astounding icy blue gaze at him. "I take you for the only one between us who found the only door at this site that was open. Are you going in or not?"

Lumpkin's slick black moustache twitched in agitation. "Yes, of course. Just give me a moment."

Lumpkin looked at the door, still a little ajar. The darkness inside looked ominous and impenetrable, like the skin of a wraith. He felt a wave of terror rush over him, just as it had done when he had braved the trek out to the ruins several days ago, to make certain the pretty girl's story held true. He had not made the trek alone, however, having enlisted the services of a local tracker from Shor's Stone. But once they had found their way into the dark corridor within, and no traps had gone off nor anything had leapt from the dark to rip out their innards, he had quietly slit the man's throat and taken his gold back, and everything else the man had of value. Another thing his new companions did not need to know about. But the feeling of being this close to something so ancient, and still 'alive' - as Mik had so aptly put it on the way down here - made him more nervous than he remembered.

Yes, he had stolen in through the door once before. But in the darkness he – and the poor tracker he had employed – had blundered about in what little light came in through the opening to find the dessicated corpses at the entrance.

They had been adventurers themselves by the look of their attire. Old rusting metal armour and faded leather, their bones brittle and grey in the shadows. What had killed them was still a mystery. When he had started to pick through their belongings the tracker had cursed him for 'violating the dead', that he was no 'true man of Skyrim', and that he was 'vile'. That's when Lumpkin had slit the man's throat wide open and watched him drop to his knees gurgling on his own blood.

'Vile?' he had hissed at the man from the shadows. 'At least the dead have no life to fear for. You, however?' And he had watched the man slowly die and collapse face first atop one of the skeletons. That's when he had got his gold back.

He managed only to snatch two satchels from the long dead adventurers when a noise came up from out of the darkness. Something deep and lithic, and eerie. The hackles had played all up and down his neck and he had fled from the ruin and back to the army as fast as he could.

Now he was here again. And these impatient fools wanted him to go in first, the Void take them all! Well if the Void did not do the job, he would speed its progress soon enough.

"Hold here awhile," he told them, peering into the dark seam of the open doorway. Was it slightly more ajar than when he had left it? He pulled out the Imperial sword he had won along with his Corporal titles. The steel felt good in his hand. All over the roll of a dice, he mused. Sometimes you don't even have to kill them. "I'll go in first, but do not follow after until I return. I want to make sure its safe for us all."

"Fine by me," Mik said from behind him. His thug of a friend grunted in agreement.

"What a brave man you are," Lourilain said, though he was quite certain her words were laced with barely eschewed sarcasm. It made him think about all the things he would do to her once he got her alone.

He shouldered in through the opening, the sword held out before him and closed his eyes, hoping to speed up their adjustment to the darkness within. He cared not at all for the safety of his companions. What he cared for was finding the fresh body of the tracker who's throat he had slit. He would have to shift the body somewhere before the others could find it. He did not need to worry about making up stories of recent dead adventurers blundering in here, especially when his companions all knew it was he who was the last to venture past the doorway.

Inside, the darkness was thick and oily. There was something dead to it all, in the air, the taste of it. Like a tomb. Suitable for the bodies that lay within, only a few yards beyond the doorway.

Pale sunlight streamed in like a huge ethereal blade, knifing through the murk and settling on the rotted remains of men who were now each as much a relic as the ruins they had come to pilfer.

"Can you see anything?"

Lumpkin almost leapt out of his skin. Mik had only spoken moderately through the opening of the doorway but his voice tolled from the walls like the voice of Akatosh. Lumpkin bit back a furious reply and said as evenly as he could. "Hold there, hold there. I think I hear something?"

He stalked across to where he had left the tracker laying face first atop one of the skeletons, his eyes gradually warming to the darkness and bringing out the shapes along the walls and roof of the huge entrance, picking out the smooth lines of the stone slabs, the golden metal girders that had once held torches long dead, and the occasional filigreed pillar soaring up from stone floor to stone ceiling.

But the tracker's body was gone.

Lumpkin gasped and his hand shot over his mouth. By the Void, he thought with dread, the man had not died straight away!

The Corporal spun in ever increasing circles and searched frantically for any sign of the man's bloody remains. But there was nothing to find. Just three ancient corpses, and that was that. Beyond the gigantic entrance a corridor loomed into darkness even more impenetrable.

They would need torches. That was certain. But where had the man blundered off to die? Lumpkin was certain the man had died right there atop the corpse. He had opened his throat wide enough to stuff a gourd down it. No man could have lived for very long after such a wound! Unless somebody had come in and moved the body?

"Are you alright, Lumpkin?" Mik called. "Do you need our help?"

Lumpkin swallowed a very dry knot in his throat. A cool breath of wind came up from the darkness and played with the hair on his brow. The skulls of the long dead stared up at him with imploring hollow eyes. He staggered back toward the light, his sword raised readily. He cleared his throat.

"Bring in torches, its darker than I recall!" he shouted. "Hurry on now. I don't have all day!"

Something was down there in the darkness, he knew it. But whether it was the tracker's corpse or something much, much worse he could not fathom.

He was relieved when he heard the strike of flint against steel and the sputtering crackle of a torch come to life. Best if he let one of the boys go ahead first from here on out. Unless of course Lourilain was willing to do so. He still wanted to get rich, but he would need these fools he had brought with him to make it so. Hopefully he could finish them as easily as he had done the tracker – wherever the man might be. Mara forbid that he might be one of the walking dead! Lumpkin doubted his heart was ready to deal with such horrors.

Think about the gold, Elmard, he told himself. Think about the gold and the sapphires and all the pretty things you'll see.

Lourilain, Mik and Aram were pushing in through the doorway. Their shadows flashed across the beam of sunlight, and the torch they brought with them lit the walls into flickering life.

All will be well, the Corporal assured himself. All is going to go swimmingly well…


End file.
